ever since i was young,
my gaze was drawn skyward.
i could tell you the story of orion,
and how to brush bernice's hair,
before i could tell you that two plus two equals four.
i know more about our vast universe,
than i know about many of my friends.

if you are not well acquainted with a pisces,
let me give you a bit of an introduction:
we are compassionate, imaginative,
we adapt to whatever is thrown at us,
and my personal favourite,
we are unfalteringly loyal.

however...
we are full of self-hate,
prone to laziness,
we are escapists
and horrendously easy to manipulate.

i believe my horoscope today is complete *******.
i do not feel utterly lovely,
i know i will not score a date
because no one feels for me romantically.
i've nothing to flaunt.
the horoscopes are saccharine lies,
but, those traits? those are me.

my soul is ancient,
i feel the pain of struggles i have not faced,
or rather, have not YET faced;
i will split my soul in two
i will break my bones
i will give every drop of my blood
i will breathe my last breath
for those that i love.

i spent two years of my life giving my heart and soul to a sagittarius.
philosophical, adventurous.
i admired him so.
but his negatives--
inconsistent. overconfident.
careless.
he was a burning house.

my mother, also a pisces, when all was said and done,
told me to stay away from those sagittarius boys.
they're dangerous for wary, fretful fish like us,
who ask 'from what bridge?' when we are told to jump.

The beaten path is hardest to go alone but it makes one stronger. One never wants to admit to oneself that misery is the predecessor to change, ushering it like the pilot ushers the plane down upon the runway.  This is a new destination you'd never have known. That is why we go up and then down, otherwise you wouldn't care for clouds. They'd be like stop signs posted on every street of every town you can't escape from. Don't you think whales like to take a dip in our atmosphere with the same exhilaration we dive down into their ocean? Marine life has it's trials, it all seems so buoyant and peacful, but its another jungle down there. Beautiful until you live it and predators lurk every corner and algae field. Everyone eating the next guy, if its your residence, it is no vacation. Its not so simple just cuz they've not got rent to pay and corrupt politics. Babies on the way while no financial burden make most species crazy. Try being a single mother just trying to keep your kids well enough hidden just to go off to find good eats for them. They have very emotional lives out there, full of pain and suffering. If whales could get drunk, mermaids would charge and set up breweries. But the ocean would dilute any profits, and two tons of blubber each would call demand too high and so whales throw themselves into our world just to escape. They could gulp the air so low key, surfacing like submarines, instead they splash mountains with their ferve, the same way we get down, tossing cares across dance floors. And we wonder why when  they take a breath, they reach for the sky, they just want to be free, where nothing of their world can touch them. And we wonder why when it's not enough, they just give up, just like us. Massive escapists desensitizing to the joys in the depths of their waters. We wonder why we find them so sad layed up on our beaches, you see it in their despondent eye. They just want to die in that memory of exhiliration. One. Last. Time. But they're not happy. Cuz they were always chasing a high that fleetingly springed them from all worry. They lay knowing its the last time and they wonder what's gonna become of them when its all over. They just figure what lays on the otherside, or even nothing has got to be better. Maybe they're right,  or maybe all the off kilter chemicals got the better of them. Full moons got them all emotional just like us, gravity pulling all their painful memories to the surface, pulling them up out of the ocean all hopeless. Shoot maybe some of them dont even mean it, they were just so tired of the krill or baby seal murda life, or sharks poaching their babies and needed longer and longer til oneday they got too sleepy and the tide snuck down too low. Like when I pass out in the shower when it's hot enough, I swear I was about to get out..then, ****. Maybe that's why they're so ******* sad. They didn't mean for it to be over, they just got caught up in that feeling. I bet the old ones though go on purpose, just to spite the sharks that took their babies out they'd rather rot in the sea breeze they loved. Or maybe they're so depressed at the loss of their child they just want it to be over. They carry their babies in their bellies just like us, I bet they get depressed like us or the smarter dogs. Being a whale, or any sober creature can be very hard, but at least if you're not running from it, you might see through the storm for the beauty of its strength, releasing fear to just stand in awe of it. You can learn to cope with pain in at least better measure to sprinting in laps, without intention, you're just on the track, even if its as vast as the pacific, adriatic, atlantic, doesnt matter all the waters you cross, they all just ran back into themselves. See, the whale can only cope, no emotional escape route, so no matter what comes, whale is miles wiser. Their calls sound a little sad but so hauntingly beautiful. Do not beach yourself humans, in your little ways everyday. Stop feeding this disbelief in yourself. You were given this brain to choose to overcome this pain, to communicate in new ways. If you get tired of something just cuz you're used to it, you've done fell off your rock, you slipped to drown in your own riptide, to get pummeled to death. Or as my Papa woulda said, you're not playing with a full deck. You drown in intoxicant, whatever your vice, liquor, uppers, downers, shopping, food, flirting, ******* to numb life's beating. You're running from sobriety, from reality, from those people you don't love anymore cuz they can't jive with your illusions. You'll look for every reason why your psyches not the problem. If you'd not only accept but seek the need to heal,  you wouldn't need constant change of scenery just to feel something, to feel snippets of sanity, mini vacations from your daily miseries. New people, places and substances are just so exhilarating, cuz you can't handle yourself. If you could, each listed above would be blessings of oneness, not necessity. Running is only blocking your life from mattering as much as it should. You squander potential wandering in circles inside yourself. I smoked **** habitually since I was twelve, it didn't really hurt me right, just my dump trucked loads of brain cells? Wrong! Sobriety is the hardest but most rewarding excursion so far. I delight everyday in the opportunities I can receive just cuz I can think so clearly. I have an occasional shot or glass of wine with coworkers and think God I feel good. Then go home and think and plot, how can I attain that joy without consuming a dollar, compromising my body?  How can I be so at home in my skin that I don't need that just to feel like this?  I'll let you know if I ever figure it out. It's the big ******* mystery, isn't it. I THINK my point is,  we would never know what's so good to be cherished if we always had it made. They call it a beautiful struggle, and i really think they're onto God with that one. Wherever your feet lay, next time you look down at them in dismay, remember your pain is the best teacher you never had to pay.  It makes you great, it makes you an epic ******* trilogy of the past present and future.  You'll get through this day, I promise you. Whatever it proves to be to you, I pray oneday you hold the kingdom. Oneday you'll praise yourself for holding on. Oneday you'll stop running. You'll just wake up and feel at home inside yourself how the wise whale makes peace with the ocean. Tempering the binges to the surface. As above so below. You just have to find the thrill within the hand you're dealt and make yourself better for it.

I **** the mood in a sour June,
opulent misery, scorched Earth,
exchanging platitudes with old faces,
full of *******; full of hot air.
Both sides of the fence
at war with themselves,
feigning inner peace and profit
across the beer garden table.

I talk of hangmen and floods,
child brides and dressing gowns,
my hometown under the mythic spell
of collective memory loss.
We have forgotten our place
in the comfort of our urban sprawl;
sirens caterwaul past the high-rise,
past the vacant church with locked doors
and the homeless on the street.

A commonplace emergency,
young male suicides, women *****
in the safety of their homes,
taught a kindness through physical force,
the way the gun drops to civilians
in countries saved through the filter
of television screens; of dust and distance.
I sit and write and think of ****,
of old loves, anxieties-
they call me crazy all the while
for not committing to the scene.

Now Afghanistan is a blueprint,
extended diagram of steady-state destruction,
a conspiracy of white man dreams,
farmlands bruised by machines of war,
by the ******* Boot,
the feeling we have been here before.
All the while, the illusion persists,
car parks filled with smoke, professional escapists
with their 9% lager, bags of tobacco,
and the megalomania of art.

I **** the mood of a whitewashed June,
advertised freedom, a mortgaged Earth,
exchanging currency for a chance of peace,
the zen garden smoker, the looted mind.
Both sides of the fence are collecting bones,
at war with themselves, whilst my eyes are red
and my philosophies, ******.
They call me crazy for dreaming of escape,
whilst never leaving the confines of home.

Think that the dolls in houses
get mad
or depressed
shoved in closets
untouched till the day they are shoved into the attic?

I opened my doll house
and all that I found
were porcelain skins
sprinkled dust
on the plastic

they got out

I am a French horn, a bottle neckless hourglass and butterscotch tape

You're a red harp with veins painted on the side

When I come home, you see me as an acrylic heap with chips of lead and belly aching homing words

Scotch sticks and smoke smells and the stitches are uncomfortable on my neck where you often warm your hands

I am a masquerade of shellfish clamoring on about the epitome of burlesque humor

You’re alien to anything other than sourdough and design

I have structured my thesis around burlesque and you fail to see the humor

When I fear the apologists

You fear the escapists

I am the tigers of the world, borrowing viciousness

You’re a long pause, loved and disquieted, painting my stripes as veins

I’m freaked out now because the apologists are escaping and the escapists are apologizing

At this clear impasse, you pity and press on until my fingers at the French horn drain to my sides

I am an island in a puddle of sand

electric impulses knaw
at nubs formerly known
as finger tips,
worn down to bits by
the desire to drench
this world with one
simple thing that may
or may not be
everlasting

i'm in search of
a replacement for
flimsy false hopes
and finicky heart pokes,
for flat lined finite
chopped up bits
flying up nostrils
in hysterical hits

even escapists smack
walls from which
they can't slither
through silently,
walls covered in
mirrors full of
faces fueled with
hostility

all the faces are
my own and it's
time i find some grace
before i finally
pull my last astonishing
escape from this place

We are all escapists
one way or another
moments overcome us
to our moods we surrender

comfort to seek
wounds and bruises to heal
courage and patience to renew
while past scenes their unwelcome presence reveal.

We are all escapists
one way or another
life is indifferent and takes no sides
we laugh and we cry, we rejoice and we suffer.

Believe not those who proudly declare
they are the invincible optimists
when the tides of life rock their boats their hearts sink
overnight they would turn miserable pessimists.

I feel the dirt,
and it's not as easy as washing it off to get rid of it.
It's been piling for years
up, in, and around me.
It's in my nails,
and I feel it pumping in my blood.
But worst of all,
I hear it in love.
It makes my attention weary.
And as I'm in the midst of it's dirtiness,
all I can think of is how I can put more strength into asking God how do get rid of it..
'cause I can't stop it.
But I won't stop trying,
it's not worth another option.
I'm no super hero,
so who believes dirt doesn't shine ?
Because i can see,
That It's glaring in your eyes.
Memories don't live like people do.
So just like that,
the ocean lives in my living room.
I sure hope I can fall into it while I throw myself around.
.. At least to cool off.
And why deal with the problems,
when you could just deal with the symptoms right ?
Throw it to the back of my conscious for the time being ?
I hate having to do that.
I hate living with dirt.
It's like a secret, mostly.
We talk about it cautious.
I think of it, grossly.
Even though it hangs, closely.
When it is in mood,
you'll hear it.
Somewhat ghostly.
This has got me shaking my head a lot.
Crap out of luck.
Like some average Joe smuck.
Like I can buy it.
But I'm crap out of a buck.
Life is a storm,
It won't miss me if I duck.
It tempts my strength to soften over time;
i just won't have that on my watch.
Dirt belongs only in certain places,
on the footprints of your guilty traces & in the past of professional escapists.
Usually on the end of a pick.
Life is a garden I hope you can dig.

Joe Dirt said we just gotta keep on,
keepin' on.